Study of the Bhagavadgita : Chapter-4 : Post- 11. - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Tuesday, February 09, 2021. 08:43. AM.
Chapter 4: The Total Picture of Creation -2.
Post-11.

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Sankhya has a humorous analogy to describe how Purusha and Prakriti work together in collaboration because, as I mentioned, Purusha consciousness is universal awareness minus activity or motion, and Prakriti is only motion or activity minus consciousness. So how can these two, inactive consciousness and active unconsciousness, be clubbed together?

The analogy of the Sankhya philosophy describes two persons, one who is blind but can walk, and another who is lame but can see. These two people join together because they both want to move in the same direction.–But how is it possible? Without legs they cannot move, and without eyes they also cannot move. So the lame person sits on the shoulders of the blind person, and now there is a joint action of seeing and moving. The lame person who sits on the shoulders of the blind walking person can see, and directs him where to go, and so it is a very good understanding between them. This is how Sankhya gives you a humorous comparison of the manner in which perhaps Universal Consciousness, which is inactive, operates in conjunction with the activity of Prakriti, which is unconscious. When these two processes are blended together and Purusha and Prakriti jointly act, what happens first is that Prakriti, in its sattva aspect, reflects the Universal Consciousness within itself, as light can be reflected in a glass. The glass here, which is sattva, is not perfectly clean where the light passes unaffected and undisturbed, but there is a little disturbance and the consciousness, which is universal Purusha, gets delimited to some extent, though in a very insignificant manner.

Sattva is all-pervadingness. The consciousness of omnipresence and all-pervadingness is sattva. In Pure Consciousness, there is no such thing as all-pervadingness, and so on. We cannot say that consciousness is all-pervading unless we define it in terms of Prakriti’s sattva guna, because a thing can be all-pervading only when there is a space to pervade. As space is a part of Prakriti, then Purusha, which is independent of Prakriti, cannot be said to be all-pervading in a strictly logical sense. It is just Being-as-such, Pure I-am, and cannot be called all-pervading. But it appears to be all-pervading on account of its reflection in the sattva guna of Prakriti, which also has other qualities – rajas and tamas. It does not mean that Prakriti is only pure sattva, all-pervadingness. It also has, under its arm, the projective forces or factors known as rajas and tamas. On account of a subtle apperception of rajas and tamas also, together with sattva, there is a slight limitedness imposed on the reflection of consciousness in the sattva guna of Prakriti. And then what happens? After Purusha there is Prakriti, and after Prakriti there is Mahat. Mahat is the third principle – Cosmic-consciousness, the Pure I-am, Be-ness-as-such. The Absolute Existence becomes conscious as all-pervading, omnipresent. This Mahat, or the Great Being Mahat-tattva, is omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent. This is the God of the universe, you may say if you like.

Pure God, by Himself, creates nothing. He is just All-in-All. Creativity is attributed to God on account of His so-called reflection in the sattva omnipresence of Prakriti, and God becomes Mahat-tattva, also known as Hiranyagarbha in Vedanta terminology. The pure potential of consciousness prior to the manifestation of Mahat in terms of Prakriti is called Ishvara, which is something like the cosmos sleeping. Sleeping is not an inactive condition; it is a dormant potential of future activity. So in Ishvara-tattva, which is the potential of Universal Consciousness coming in conjunction with Prakriti as a whole, we have Ishvara-tattva. This is a term which is not in the Sankhya but in the Vedanta doctrine. Mahat may be said to be Hiranyagarbha, the all-knowing creative principle, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent consciousness. When omnipresence becomes conscious of itself – I-am, omnipresent – it becomes cosmic Ahamkara. So first is Purusha, second is Prakriti, third is Mahat, fourth is Ahamkara. Ahamkara here is to be understood as Cosmic Self-awareness – the whole universe becoming conscious: ‘I am.’ It is not merely omnipresence as such; it is consciousness of one’s being omnipresent.

In the state of Ahamkara, Cosmic I-amness, or consciousness of one’s being omnipresent, a threefold activity is supposed to take place: the threefold division of the supreme Self-consciousness into the subjective perceiver adhyatma, the objective universe adhibhuta, and a third connecting link adhidaiva, about which I mentioned already. The trouble of creation starts at this stage. Until this time, it was all paradise, glory, all-pervading bliss, God roaming alone in the Garden of Eden; there was no Adam and Eve, nothing of the kind. Wonder! This wonder gets clouded when this Cosmic I-amness decides to divide itself into three, and beholds itself as three. For example, your body has a trunk, a right hand and a left hand. The right hand is totally different from the left hand. If you can suppose that the right hand has a consciousness, and with that consciousness it can know the existence of the left hand, this will be adhyatma and adhibhuta. But it cannot know the existence of the left hand except through the body, of which it is a part. So the entire body is the transcendent connecting link which makes it possible for the adhyatma to be aware that there is adhibhuta.

To be continued ....

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